D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting

[AgentPaper]

why are you confidant they WotC will change their design policy and release a large number of base classes, instead of relying on customizable backgrounds and a limited number of base classes?

Er, I don't think they will change their design philosophy, I think they will continue making lots of classes as they have since 3rd edition. If anything, were they to focus on a small number of classes that cover a lot of areas, that would be the change. Even looking at sneaky characters, there's also the Ranger, the Assassin, the Bard, the Ninja, the Scout, the Shadowcaster, and the Lurk.

And even if you don't want to fit into one of those classes, you can choose another class, and find a background, choose feats, and pick skills to improve your sneakiness. I think the problem here is more that you're tied to the "Rogue = Sneaky" and inversely, "Sneaky = Rogue", when neither has to necessarily be the case.

If WotC does not plan on releasing classes like the "Assassin", "Trapsmith", "Spy", etc, do you agree that Thieves' Cant should be a background?

Trapsmith and Spy are skills, not classes. If WotC really did plan to not release Assassins, Rangers, and so on, and instead to lump all of those archetypes into the Rogue, then yes I would expect them to remove Thieves' Cant, at least from the base class. However, I would say that the fact that Thieves' Cant is in there at all is proof that they do want to make classes more narrow, as they have in the past, which leads me to believe that the other classes will be put in. We've already seen this with the Wizard, who instead of being made broad, was made narrow, and now we have the Warlock and the Sorcerer to fill those other niches.

EDIT - A third question;
Why do you think that the things which make individuals distinct from each other should be different base classes, instead of different backgrounds? (which is what I'm advocating for, on the basis that it fits the current design)

Why do you think that backgrounds should be the only way to make individuals distinct?

Edit:

Actually, they briefly mention you can multiclass like 3E, pg 7 of the new Class PDF under Warlocks: "Unless you have spellcasting from another source:", how you are getting another source unless you multiclass?

So it proves we have 3.5 version to me.

You can get spells from feats. Only minor so far, but we might be getting higher level spellcasting at higher level feats.